RN Pay

I am an RN with 11 years CLINICAL experience. I am most likely moving my family to Northwestern KS (Hays to Colby area) in 2-3 years.

I am currently making $31/hour here in SE Washington State working for in a Cardiologist office. I have settled with the fact that I am likely not going to see this much in pay but would prefer not to see too much of a pay cut?

With my lack of Med/Surg Acute experience I have found that many facilities are less likely to hire me, thus I may find myself doing trial by fire, working for an agency?

Let see if I can remember correctly... 2nd shift diff (like from 11a-11p) 10% then 3rd shift (3p-3a or 7p-7a) 15% of base pay. Education assistance up to $3000 a year to take classes (like getting your masters, or certifications), great nurse internship (lasting 6 months- 18 months depending on where you work in the hospital), hospital matches your input into your 401 retirement, good health care, vision, dental, etc etc the list goes on and on.....

These are really important factors when I picked where to work out of school. Also the hospital I work at is a Magnet hospital which says a great deal about the organization and it's employees. I personally only want to work in hospitals that are NOT for profit just based on experience for clinicals, family, etc.

If you plan on doing something else beside the Dr office work you may want to try ithat out where you are living now to get the experience you need
For example if you want to work agency it might benifit you to work some time doing that now
I moved acrossthe county from east coast to Ks I worked 14 years with children on vents etc in the home and now there isnt much need for that where i live I have applied for several postion in hospital but i have no recent floor experience nor would i really ever want to go back and do hospital work but I really am limited esecially now with my salary. I make $32 an hour working part time when i want to work

I live in Hays, KS. Let me tell you, Kansas City & Wichita are completely different worlds than western KS. It has its perks though. The cost of living is very, very low here. Low stress and friendly people. Hays has an excellent hospital www.haysmed.com. I can't tell you much about pay for home care or doctor's offices, but new grad RN's start around $18 and someone with your experience could probably make around $23-25, but the cost of living is very low here. Between Hays and Colby, you can buy almost any house for way less than $200K. In the town I came from where RN's made around $30 an hour, you couldn't hardly buy a house for $200K, so there is a difference. If you need anymore help, let me know. Western KS is a great place to live.

Just about any LTC here in Southeast Kansas will pay an RN 26 or more dollars. Regardless of experience. The hospitals in this area just recently started paying more dt the LTCs paying so much more than they do. LPNs start out at 18 in LTC, hospital wages vary greatly.

I've heard of nurses up near Witchita making 40+, there seems to be a severe shortage up there.

Seems that all the LTCs around where I work are matching the agency wages now, dt being tired of the revolving door and turn over they have had over the past few years.

Now the agencies don't really pay enough, so I hope to see those wages go up soon!

I'm an LPN of close to 2 years. I make 20 at my full time LTC job and 20 at agency as well.

Its very adventageous to job hop in this profession it seems. The nurses that I know that have been loyal to a place and stayed there for years, well they make considerably less than the new hires straight outta school. Sad but true. I have seen some nurses have success with finding a new job that pays more and then getting a raise where they work at, seems to be the only way to get a raise these days.

In northwestern Kansas, you'll be lucky to make much over 20 an hour. However, you're cost of living is going to be miniscule. You can buy a very nice house (I mean a VERY nice house) in some of those towns for WAY under 50K. My great aunt died, and we couldn't sell her 2 bedroom/one bathroom rancher for 5 thousand in north/northcentral Kansas. That's right, we couldn't give it away. We "abandoned" it to the city to avoid paying taxes on it.

Depending upon what is going on in the area, you could pay less for a nice house than you would for your car. So your lesser pay will go farther, in the housing market anyhow.

The downside is that you have to live in a town the population of your block, with the nearest grocery store maybe 30 miles down the interstate, 6+ hours away from the nearest airport, maybe you have to drive 50+ miles to see a dentist or a general practitioner (who is often really a nurse practitioner who has her own clinic and has a traveling GP who visits once a week) and if you need any specialty care, you are sent 200-300 miles away, to Denver, Wichita, or Topeka.

Your kids may ride the bus one hour or more each way to school, and even then, they may only have 50 kids in their entire graduating class. This is an advantage in some ways, but in teacher recruitment and class offerings it is definitely a disadvantage. You might have the same teacher teaching three or more subjects, you don't have the class offerings larger districts have, and academically speaking some of the smaller, rural districts are behind their larger counterparts, particularly where AP and college prep classes come to mind. You'll drive sometimes 4 hours to play a football game. Many smaller districts have fewer sports offerings--only the major ones, no tennis, golf, swimming, some places nothing but football/volley ball, basket ball, and track. Few if any extracurricular clubs or intramural sports or activities. You aren't going to find fencing, archery, film club, or chess club in small town Kansas.

I went to a central Kansas school in a smallish town where my graduating class was around 200, my cousins went to schools where their graduating class was less than 50;. I didn't have to drive far for school, but for junior high and high school my cousins drove almost 45 minutes (better than taking the bus, the ride was almost 1 1/2 hours each way). I was jealous, because they had their own cars and were driving to school at I'm thinking 14?

None of us (myself, my cousins, my friends from school) felt even close to prepared when we went to college. We were successful in our college careers, but we floundered for a while with the academic expectations, and were jealous of the people who grew up in Wichita, Topeka, Lawrence and KC who had good schools where they could take Latin, play in the kickball league of their school, and do after school activities like film club or science olympics.

While there are some fantastic advantages for families in the very small towns of rural northwest Kansas, there are also some significant disadvantages. Most of those towns are shrinking in size (hence the ability to buy cheap, cheap homes) but they are shrinking for a reason: jobs, schools and opportunities.

I agree, we lived in Kansas for 20 years, then went to California, and now I am in Oklahoma living at our retirement home. With experience you can find a great job, lower pay , but much lower housing costs. Our home in Kansas is leased out. We don't pay 4,000 for both of our homes together...Now Oklahoma has a low pay...lower than Kansas. With experience though you should start at a higher rate...

Wow, I want to move to Kansas! I live in a decent house but my mortgage is $4,000 a month! It's not a mansion, just a regular-sized home in the DC area.

she is right we have an apt 1,000 sq ft NICE!!! and we pay only 565 a month + electric we use the hell out of it and have never paid more than 30.00 my dad owns a house and it is HUGE nice too 5 bd basement pool huge yard front and back pretty good nabiorhood and 2 huge livingrooms 2.5 bath and he only paid 100,000